Non-cycling books

[Patrickpioneer]

I love reading about people touring on bikes or walking but I will also read almost anything. I have just finished reading 'survive the savage sea' a true account of a family from Scotland who sold up the farm and bought a sailing boat. The boat sank after a killer whale attack. they spent just over thirty days in the life raft and a small dingy. Its hard to recommend a book, we all have differing tastes. Lets try and start a book list on here of any books you have read that you enjoyed reading, be it fiction, fact or even technical.
Patrick.

[661-Pete]

Well! In my 'third age', I have indeed taken to the reading I sadly neglected (apart from SF) in my younger years, by picking up some of the world's great classics. Partly to assuage my dejection at having had to abandon my aspirations towards crossword puzzle compiling, plus one or two other hobbies that curled up and died...

So what am I on at the moment? None other than Les Misérables (in English) - mainly inspired by the recent TV dramatisation (which of necessity took a lot of liberties with the plot, but no matter). Tough reading but I'm about three-quarters of the way through now.

I feel we could do with a Victor Hugo in the 21st century, as well as the 19th!

One passage which I've just got to, is food for thought:

There is the émeute*, there is the insurrection; they are two angers; one is wrong, the other is right. In democratic states, the only governments founded in justice, it sometimes happens that a fraction usurps; then the whole rises up, and the necessary vindication of its right may go so far as to take up arms. In all questions which spring from the collective sovereignty, the war of the whole against the fraction is insurrection; the attack of the fraction against the whole an émeute.

*My version keeps the French word; = "riot" or "uprising".

Ring any bells? We could be describing the situation that may come about in this benighted island of ours, in the coming weeks and months. Who will be 'in the right' in Hugo's perspective? I, like many others, intend to join in a peaceful demo about you-know-what, later this month. Just hope it won't develop into an émeute...

[Audax67]

Interestingly, the French word for a pack of dogs is a meute.

One I read a while back and enjoyed was Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death, which interleaves the execution of Ann Boleyn, the intrigues of Aztec emperors and the domesticity of Hernán Cortés into a tennis match between the Spanish poet Queveda and the painter Caravaggio. Or if you fancy being puzzled there's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (well, well). And Alasdair Gray is always good for a nasty cold feeling. Imparting it, that is. Try Lanark, it's a hoot.

But really I most dwell in SFland too. I just finished Ian Tregillis's Milkweed trilogy, which is a bloody good story if you can forgive his Californian mangling of 1940s UK idiom ("someone's pilfered the safe!"). Just starting Dan Simmons' Prayers to Broken Stones: Mother has been resurrected but she's not really like the Mk.1 model - we're expecting the pointy teeth any day now. That's not a spoiler, really, since I'm only 5 pp in.

No, strike Dan Simmons' opus, it's morbid & depressing. I'm reading Sudden Death again.

[merseymouth]

Hi there, I always enjoy returning to "The Riddle of the Sands" by Erskine Childers. Great spy and Hostilities romp.
Stealing Speed is also a book that motor-bike types would enjoy, by Matt Oxley. So but it involves the use pf petrol. MM

[Audax67]

I started a biography of Childers a couple of weeks ago, but the style was atrocious so I baled. Fascinating bloke.

[Patrickpioneer]

zen and art of motorcycle maintenance

I am two thirds through this book, sometimes I think its inspirational and then after reading some more I think its a total load of small round objects and lacks quality
Patrick

[hondated]

zen and art of motorcycle maintenance

I am two thirds through this book, sometimes I think its inspirational and then after reading some more I think its a total load of small round objects and lacks quality
Patrick

Hi Patrick I must have read that over 50 years ago but remember it being a difficult book to read.
However what I do seem to remember is " how you become one with the motorcycle ".
Still get that feeling today when out on mine on a nice bendy road.

[Hobbs1951]

Having read Pirsig's book many times, first when I was at school there is, in my opinion, a better one that explores similiar themes - The Perfect Vehicle by Melissa Holbrook Pierson (pub 1997).

John.

[Cyril Haearn]

I love reading about people touring on bikes or walking but I will also read almost anything
..

'Almost' anything? Like a dog, 'eats anything, loves books'?
The Grauniad saves one the trouble of seeking out books, this week it instructs us to read The Rings of Saturn* by W G Sebald, one of my favourites, he also wrote Austerlitz which is set partly in Cymru, Y Bala, Abermawddach
He writes long meandering sentences, but quite easy to read I think
* travels in East Angular and then some

[Patrickpioneer]

Just finished reading this, if your a carer read it, it will help.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/957 ... _to_Caring

[Mick F]

I can't remember reading a book for years.
I've started a few that sound interesting to me, and started a few that people have given me as presents, but not finished any for years and years. People have stopped giving me books as presents.

I even have issues with magazines.

[fossala]

I can't remember reading a book for years.
I've started a few that sound interesting to me, and started a few that people have given me as presents, but not finished any for years and years. People have stopped giving me books as presents.

I even have issues with magazines.

I thought magazines always have issues...

[Mick F]

I must say that I was thinking twice about using the word "issues".

[mattheus]

Having read Pirsig's book many times, first when I was at school there is, in my opinion, a better one that explores similiar themes - The Perfect Vehicle by Melissa Holbrook Pierson (pub 1997).

John.

I'm not a "biker", but I did enjoy much of Pirsig's book. So I looked up your recommendation and it sounds interesting.

Amusing review on the Goodreads page:
"Unless you're into motorcycles, I don't recommend this book. But if you have a husband who is into motorcycles, he'll probably want you to read it."

I can think of cycling books that this applies to!

[Mike Sales]

I'm reading Narrow Boat by L.T.C.Rolt. It was published during the war and was seminal in the revival of the canals as leisure facilities. He describes a trip around the canal network just before the war and his attention to the old, disappearing ways of farming and life in general reminds me of Cobbet's Rural Rides. There were still working narrow boats then. Fine descriptions of the countryside and old churches and pubs. Fulmination against modern industry, thirties suburbia and "roadhouses".Disgust at the old industrial desolation that canals were built to serve.